As though aware of the scrutiny, Adept Zeth turned to face her and Dalia guiltily turned away, closing her eyes and concentrating on the sounds she had heard. The rumbling of the carriage was loud, yet Dalia felt she could hear something beyond the squeal of the metal wheels along the rails.

Something soft, a whisper of far away... a chorus of commingled voices.

*Do you hear that?' she asked.

*Hear what?' asked Caxton.

*Those voices.'

*Voices? No, I don't, but then I can't hear anything much beyond the noise of this elevator,' said Caxton. *I wonder when its last maintenance check was?'

Dalia fought the urge to snap at him for that remark. *I swore I could hear somebody whispering. Do any of the rest of you hear it?'

*I hear nothing,' said Zouche, *except that the bearings on this carriage need replacing.'

*Thanks for that,' said Dalia. *Severine? Mellicin?'

Both women shook their heads, and Dalia risked a glance over the railings, seeing a change in the texture of darkness below and realising that the carriage was approaching the bottom of the shaft.

Dalia caught a glance pa.s.s between Rho-mu 31 and Adept Zeth. Though their faces were covered, she could tell from their body language that they knew what she was asking about.

*You hear them, don't you?' asked Dalia. *Your hearing is augmented. You must hear it. It's like a thousand voices all whispering at once, but as though they're really far away or behind a thick wall or something.'

Adept Zeth shook her head. *No, Dalia. I don't hear them, but I know they are there. The reason you hear them is one of the reasons you are so special to me.'

*What do you mean?'

*You mean she's right?' asked Zouche. *There really are voices here?'

*In a manner of speaking,' said Zeth with a nod. *But most people will never hear them.'

*Why not?' asked Dalia, hearing the voices grow louder, like the sound she imagined the waves made on a sh.o.r.eline, though without any sense of the words they spoke. *Why can I hear them and no one else here can?'

The carriage began to slow, coming to a halt at the base of the cylinder with the smallest b.u.mp. The ground was floored with marble threaded with silver and gold wiring that glittered as though alive with current.

A number of unremarkable steel doors exited the chamber, but Dalia's eyes were drawn to a steady pulse of light that spilled through a low archway in one silver wall. She knew in the marrow of her bones that the source of the voices lay beyond it.

*All will become clear in time,' said Adept Zeth, *but save your questions until I have shown you the wonders that lie within my forge.'

KELBOR-HAL STOOD at the very edge of the dome with his back to Kane and his hood drawn up over his elongated head. Waving manip arms were poised at his shoulders, and one turned as Kane approached. Beside the Fabricator General was the ebony-skinned automaton of Lukas Chrom, its smooth, featureless face turning towards him with apparent curiosity.

Kane disliked automatons, as he hated all attempts to mimic the perfection of the human form by mechanical means. As a mark of respect, Chrom had also gifted an automaton to Kane the previous year, but he had never activated it and it remained without power in one of the tech-vaults of Mondus Occulum.

No, the human condition could be enhanced and augmented with technology, but should never be replicated or replaced by technology.

Kane allowed himself a tight smile. The Technotheologians of Cydonia Mensae would have a field day with such apparent contradictions inherent in his thoughts. That a man so enhanced by the boons of technology should so resist the inevitable meld of human and machine.

He felt the automaton scan his biometrics, reading his ident.i.ty in the organic portions of his flesh, and his electrical resonance field that was as much a unique signature a if not more so a as any gene-print.

The Fabricator General was an imposing individual, a figure rendered ma.s.sively tall by the machine parts and bulky augmetics that had replaced eighty-seven point six per cent of his flesh. Mechadendrites, alive with blades, saws and myriad other attachments waved at his back, while innumerable data wheels pulsed within him. Kane wondered how much of a body could be replaced with technology and still be called human.

A green glow emanated from within Kelbor-Hal's hood, his machine face alive with flickering lights, and his internal structure whirring with activity. Kane knew better than to interrupt whatever cogitations his master was calculating, and cast his gaze through the thick gla.s.s over the glorious, sacred soil of Mars.

The entire eastern flank of Olympus Mons was laid out before him, layered with tier upon tier of engine houses, forges, docks, ore-smelteries and a.s.sembly shops that reached from the ground to the very summit of the long-dead volcano. Spires and smoke stacks clung to the mountain like a metallic fungus, hives of industry working day and night to provide for the Emperor's armies.

Millions toiled in the Fabricator General's domain, from adepts in the highest spires to oil-stained labourers in the lightless depths of the sweltering manufactorum.

Those privileged to serve the Fabricator General dwelt in the worker hives that sprawled eastwards for hundreds of kilometres like a slick out towards the corrugated landscape of the Gigas Sulci. A pall of smoke hung like a fog over the sub-hives of the worker districts, haphazard structures of steel and refuse bulked out with offcuts and unusable waste from the forges.

Beyond the domain of the Fabricator General, the volcanic plateau of Tharsis spread for thousands of kilometres, the landscape scarred by millennia of industry and exploitation. Far to the south-east, Kane could see the monstrous heat haze of Ipluvien Maximal's reactor chain and the dense cloud above his forge complex that occupied the ground between the twin craters of Biblis Patera and Ulysses Patera.

Kane switched to an enhanced vision mode, filtering out the distortion and increasing his magnification until he could see the Tharsis Montes chain of volcanoes beyond Maximal's forge.

The northernmost and largest of the gigantic mountains was Ascraeus Mons, a towering geological edifice that was home to Legio Tempestus. The middle mountain in the chain was Pavonis Mons, a brooding peak that aptly reflected the character of Legio Mortis, the t.i.tan legion that made its fortress within its dour, ashen depths.

Furthest south was Arsia Mons, a perpetually smoke-wreathed volcano that had been brought back from dormancy by Adept Koriel Zeth to serve her Magma City, which lay on the southern flank of the mountain.

Far beyond the Tharsis Montes, the ground rose up sharply in a series of sheer escarpments before dropping down towards the vast expanse of the Syria Planum.

Lukas Chrom's Mondus Gamma forge complex occupied the southern swathe of this broken, desolate landscape, though even an adept as hungry to expand his domain as Chrom did not dare build in the plain's northern reaches.

There the landscape fell away, appearing to crumble into a series of maze-like canyons, steep-walled grabens and shadowed valleys. Said to have been created by volcanic activity in aeons past, this was the Noctis Labyrinthus, a darkened region of steep valleys whose depths were never warmed by the sun.

For reasons not fully understood a and never articulated a the adepts of Mars had shunned the Noctis Labyrinthus, preferring to build their forges beneath extinct volcanoes or within the bowls of vast impact craters.

Kane's forge, known as Mondus Occulum, lay hundreds of kilometres to the north-east of Ascraeus Mons, a vast network of manufactories and weapon shops spread between the domed mountains of Ceraunius Tholus and Tharsis Tholus. The vast majority of his forge's resources went into the production of war materiel for the Astartes, and they never ceased manufacture.

A SIGHING WHIR of data wheels spooling down told Kane that the Fabricator General had finished his deliberations. He turned from the view across the plains of Tharsis and made the sign of the Icon Mechanic.u.m towards his master.

*Kane,' said Kelbor-Hal. *You are unscheduled.'

*I know, my lord,' replied Kane. *But a matter has arisen that I felt compelled to bring to your attention.'

*Felt? An irrelevant term,' said Kelbor-Hal. *Either the matter requires my attention or it does not. Which is it?'

Kane read his master's impatience in the modulation of his cant and pressed on.

*It is a matter of some urgency and does indeed require your attention,' confirmed Kane.

*Then exload the issue swiftly,' ordered Kelbor-Hal. *I am scheduled to meet with Melgator in eight point three minutes.'

*Amba.s.sador Melgator?' inquired Kane, intrigued despite himself. He disliked Melgator, knowing the man had few pretensions of pursuing the quest for knowledge over his own quest for influence and power. *What business is the amba.s.sador about these days?'

*The amba.s.sador will be acting as my emissary to ensure the loyalty of the forges of Mars,' said the Fabricator General.

*Surely such a thing is not in question?' said Kane, horrified that a sycophant like Melgator would judge the loyalty of his fellow adepts.

*In such troubled times, nothing can be counted on as certain,' replied Kelbor-Hal. *But do not concern yourself with affairs beyond your remit, fabricator loc.u.m. Tell me of the matter you bring before me.'

Kane bit back an angry retort at the undue binary emphasis his master placed on his subordinate t.i.tle and said, *It's the Legions, my lord. The Astartes cry out for supplies and we are failing to meet their requirements.'

*Long have we known that the supply situation for many of the Legion fleets would be troublesome,' replied Kelbor-Hal. *Given the distances the fleets are operating from Mars, supply problems were a mathematical certainty. You should have antic.i.p.ated this and made contingencies.'

*I have done so,' said Kane, irritated that his master would think he might make such a basic error in his computations. *The Mechanic.u.m has done its utmost to meet those challenges, but they are impossible to overcome completely. As the fleets operate at ever greater distances, the failings in the system only compound themselves.'

*Failings?' snapped Kelbor-Hal. *I designed the system myself. It is a logic-based scheme of supply and demand without room for error or misunderstanding.'

Kane knew he was on dangerous ground and hesitated before he spoke again. *With respect, my lord, it is a scheme that does not factor in every variable. There is a human factor that introduces random elements that cannot be accounted for.'

*A human element,' repeated Kelbor-Hal. The hiss of binary contained a vehement disparagement in its code, as though the Fabricator General would be happier without such elements altogether. *It is always the human element that skews calculations. Too many elements of chaotic variability alter the outcome in ways too numerous to predict. It is no way to run a galaxy.'

*My lord, if I may?' said Kane, knowing that his master was p.r.o.ne to tangential discourses on the fallibility of human nature.

Kelbor-Hal nodded. *Continue.'

*As I said, the issue of supplying the Legions has always been problematic, but recently I have identified a pattern within the structure that appears too often to be a coincidence.'

*A pattern? What pattern?'

Kane hesitated, reading a spike of interest register in the Fabricator General's binaric field. *Where we might reasonably expect those Legions operating closest to Mars to have the fewest supply problems, that's not what I'm seeing.'

*Then what are you seeing?'

*That the Legions without supply problems are those acting in direct support of the Warmaster.'

BEYOND THE ARCHWAY lay Koriel Zeth's inner forge, and Dalia had never seen anything like it. Hewn from the bedrock of Mars and six hundred metres in diameter, the forge was a perfectly hemispherical cavern clad in silver metal. The curving walls were a latticework of coffers, each filled with a human being plugged with ribbed cables and copper wires.

*There's hundreds of them,' breathed Severine.

Dalia's skin crawled at the sight of so many people fixed into the very fabric of the walls and ceiling of the dome, knowing that Severine was wrong a there were thousands of people fitted into the alcoves.

The apex of the dome was a metallic disc that burned with light and from which crackling golden lines radiated around the chamber, like information ghosting along fibre-optic cables as they pa.s.sed from coffer to coffer.

The fiery lines all eventually reached the ground, carried from the walls along the wires embedded in the marble flooring towards a figure who sat like a king upon a golden throne raised on a dais of polished black granite. Glittering silver devices with parabolic dishes projected from the cardinal points of the elliptical walls, all of which were aimed towards the convergence of energy at the raised throne.

It was towards this solitary figure that Zeth marched, flanked by Rho-mu 31 and followed by Dalia and her fellows. Dalia felt a crackling charge in the air, as though a powerful generator was pumping out megawatts of power, but she could see nothing in the chamber that would produce such an output.

For the forge of an adept as senior as Koriel Zeth, it was strangely empty, though what it contained was no less strange for that fact. As Dalia made her way to the centre of the chamber, she looked into the faces of the nearest figures encapsulated within the coffers and sealed in by glossy, translucent membranes.

For all intents and purposes, they were identical.

Thin and wasted, their muscles were stretched over their skeletons as though pulled too tightly across their bones. Clad in simple robes that might once have been green, the figures were held immobile by silver manacles and pipes that writhed with an undulating, peristaltic motion.

*Are they servitors?' asked Severine, her voice hushed.

*Course they are,' said Zouche, showing no such restraint in volume. *What else would they be? Stands to reason, doesn't it?'

*I'm not sure,' whispered Mellicin.

*These aren't servitors,' said Dalia, now seeing what Mellicin had noticed.

One other feature unified the figures bound into the alcoves, a strip of white cloth bound over their sunken eye sockets.

*Then what are they?' demanded Zouche.

*They're psykers.'

1.06.

SURROUNDED BY THE thousands of psykers, Dalia now understood the source of the voices she had heard during their descent to the chamber, the realisation making the sound swell within her skull. Still she could not make out the words or the sense, save that they were all directing their thoughts towards the individual enthroned at the centre of the chamber.

*Psykers,' hissed Zouche, placing a clenched fist over his heart with his forefinger and little finger extended.

*How is that going to help?' asked Mellicin.

*It wards off evil spirits,' explained Zouche.

*How does it do that?' asked Dalia. *Really, I want to know.'

Zouche shrugged, his thick shoulders and stunted neck making the gesture encompa.s.s his whole upper body. *I don't know, it just does.'

*Really, Zouche,' tutted Mellicin. *I would have thought someone like you would be above such superst.i.tions.'

The stunted man shook his head. *It was all that saved my grandmother's life back on Terra when a blood-wytch came to feed on the children from our exclave. I wouldn't be here now if she'd thought as you do. I'll say no more, but it's your souls at risk here, not mine.'

*Whatever keeps you happy,' said Caxton, laughing and mimicking the gesture with exaggerated effect, though Dalia saw through his forced mirth. The young lad was genuinely unnerved by the psykers, as was the rest of the group.

Dalia was more curious than afraid, for she had never seen a psyker before, though she had, of course, heard many tales of their strange powers and infamous debaucheries. She suspected most of those were embellished far beyond any truth they might once have contained, but seeing so many of them gathered together made her flesh crawl in ways she had never experienced.

Just thinking about the psykers seemed to enhance her sensitivity to them, and it took an effort of will to force the tumult of distant voices from her head. Dalia took Caxton's hand as she climbed towards the seated figure, concentrating on following Zeth as the adept and Rho-mu 31 reached the top of the granite dais.

A golden throne stood on the dais, its occupant strapped in as securely as any of the individuals confined to the coffers, but where they were drawn and gaunt, this individual was healthy and serene.

The throne's occupant was a man of around thirty years, his features finely sculpted and his skull shaven. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be asleep, though from the number of cannulae embedded in the man's arms, she doubted that sleep was natural. He wore a plain robe of red cloth with the black and white cog of the Mechanic.u.m st.i.tched over his right breast.

A bra.s.s-rimmed vox-thief hung below his mouth, and bundles of wires ran from the device to a variety of recording apparatus.

Adept Zeth stood beside the rec.u.mbent man, and Dalia realised with a start that she recognised what he sat upon.

*I see you recognise the design,' said Zeth.